EVENTS

Home video proves Obama born in Kenya!

Conservative circles are buzzing at the release of a new home video that was taken by Barack Obama’s father during his actual birth. Although old and grainy, the video clearly shows a white woman giving birth to a baby, with Obama’s mother’s name (Ann Dunham) on her chart, her photo, a calendar open to the month of August 1961, and a flag of Kenya. This proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Obama was born in Kenya.

Or does it? Crooks and Liars lists all the signs that show that this is a fake.

In addition I would add a new one, that this business of fathers even being in the delivery room, let alone filming the process, is a relatively new phenomenon that originated in the west. At least in Sri Lanka, a father was not allowed in the delivery room unless he was also a physician, and this was the case even into the 1980s when my daughter was born. I suspect that the same would be true in Kenya.

But you can be sure that this video will spread like wildfire amongst the birthers as the final definitive proof of the greatest conspiracy of our time, to install an ineligible Kenyan Muslim Communist as president.

I would’ve snorted with derision if that were a birth scene in a movie or TV show – for a purported newborn that kid’s huge! I laughed out loud at them holding the “umbilical cord” on with their finger, too.

If I was filming the birth of my son in, say, Germany to a German woman… there’s a good chance there’d be an American flag somewhere in the room. Barack Sr wanting a Kenyan flag for a Hawaii birth does not seem at all surprising to me.

So even if the video is authentic… how does this prove he was born in Kenya?

I think you are giving them too much credit. These people have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. They wanted to somehow show that the birth took place in Kenya. What could they put as a symbol of Kenya? A flag, of course! I’m surprised that they didn’t also have chorus in the room singing the Kenyan national anthem, just to drive the point home.

I am reminded of the wonderfully cheesy TV series Sunset Beach. One of the story arcs had some characters going to London and being interviewed by the police.
The Scene in the Police station had a flag pole in the corner of the room, with a Union Jack on it!
No British Police station has ever done this, but the makers of the TV show just blithely assumed that what Americans did, everyone else would do too.
(Don’t even ask about the “British” cops wearing shoulder holsters…)

Also, look at that cool stethoscope, with white plastic ear plug tips. I don’t remember those from the 1960s.

I just realized, looking at the date, that Obama is only a few months older than my first son. No fathers in birthing rooms at that time. No cameras, either. No handing newborns to the mother until all the clean-up had been done.

Clean sheets! So funny!

And the baby was first hung upside down, holding him by his heels until his air passages were cleared and he gave his first cry. Maybe (probably) they still are. No doctor ever picked a neonate up by his chest at that stage.

And the umbilical cord was cut and tied, either in a self knot, or with a string. Then a few inches of cord were left on the umbilicus and bound or bandaged with gauze. It dried up on its own over a week or so, then fell off. It would never be cut at the belly button proper, to avoid hemorrhage.

One of my absolute favourite tropes is the idea that everyone in the UK either speaks like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, or the Queen (she’s the main character played by Helen Mirren in that film of hers).

It’s a hilariously bad fake, from the enormous six-month-old standing in for a neonate to the medical chart in which every day is August 4.

But I think this is making more ripples on non-Conservative sites (where posters like to point at it and laugh) than with actual Conservatives. A visit to the notoriously gullible right wing WND shows no obvious references to it; the Free Republic site doesn’t seem to have any stories about it either.

All those pointing out inconsistencies like the spotless sheets, bizarrely relaxed woman in labour, unusually developed neonate and anachronistic technology are missing the point. You see, this is all further proof that Obama is the Antichrist and had reality-distorting powers even on the day of his birth.

It’s purported to be on Super 8, not video. Of course, Super 8 wasn’t introduced until 1965. Also, that was shot on video, not film. The graininess and marks that look like film are actually plug-ins for iMovie. Not only is this fake, it’s a very bad fake. The least they could have done is shot it on actual 8 mm film.

The English do, but only when our national football team is still in the World/European Cup. They very quickly disappear from windows and cars when we inevitably lose on penalties in the quarter final.

Wales is probably the flag-happiest country in the UK the rest of the time, but when they have a huge badass dragon on it, can you blame them? 🙂

“Home video” in 1961? Do you really think a hospital would let a guy in with one of the humongous cameras that they needed back then? Of course if it was shot on Super-8 (which would be more likely for a home movie) there’d be the negative and the manufacturing date/batch-id on the film. It’s getting to the point where faking a negative would be very difficult simply because of availability of the materials. Notice the color registration in the sample above? It’s intended to give the appearance of aged chromogenic film – if it was video that wouldn’t happen and, more to the point, why didn’t the people who digitized it color-correct it? Oh, right, they didn’t color correct it because it’s fake and having it color-shifted just screams “old” doesn’t it?